Story: Unit 131
Unit 131 is a short story about the origins of the eponymous Unit 131. It takes place sometime during the year 1983, In an unknown location. Unit 131 The sounds of machinery, the clanking of parts, water flowing deftly through pipes reverberated through the the dark and dimly lit factory. Dusty yellow lights shined down on the autonomous workers spaced along the conveyor belts, these robots new and old. A layer of dust coated and dulled some, while others sparkled under the yellow light. Each was modeled after a humanoid, with a curved, shiny and bare plastic head from which glowing eyes shone in hues of red to orange to shades of metallic gold. One robot in particular bore grey-painted steel, with purple glowing eyes and mouth, and accents all over its body that shared the same hue. This was Unit-131. The robot stared at his small cart, waiting patiently for it to be filled up with raw scrap metal he was to bring to a smelter. With the sound of metal feet hitting the ground, at least five robots walked up, each carrying a compacted and crushed ball of metal. Without even pausing the bots turned and dropped their cubed metal into the cart with a loud 'thud' that shook the room for a moment before quieting. Unit-131 looked to the scrap and raised his head slowly, moving forward to the smelter. Its audio receptors picked up the hiss of the molten metal as the sound escaped from the open doors of the furnace. It dropped the cubes in, one by one, watching them melt down into the familiar glow of liquid metal. Suddenly it looked up.Through its one purple glowing eye, it saw its built-in heads-up display’s dull blue text informing it that he had new orders. 131 returned the cart and marched diligently to the assigned spot. It noticed another robot like him being disposed of, having been rendered non-functional due to a missing leg. It looked back and saw a robotic arm, grabbing more scrap off the conveyor belt and dropping it onto a table. Its new assignment parameters were simple; it was to simply scoop the scrap into a small rubber chute that transported the metal down below. 131 examined the rough metal ore, picking it up and dropping it into the chute repeatedly and monotonously. Hours passed as it repetitively carried out the demanded task, its optics watching the glint of the metal refuse as it disappeared down the gullet of the tube to be carried away to other parts of the factory. Then something changed. 131 looked at the conveyor belt, noticing how the robotic arm hanging above it was no longer picking up the scraps properly. Its claws grabbed at scrap that was not there, clamps closing on nothing but air. Malfunction. 131 stood there, unsure of what to do: there was no prompt, no protocol to enact and no instructions to address the malfunction. Without further orders, the robot simply stood there watching the arm, oblivious to the metal that was piling up at the end of the conveyor belt. Quicker than a bullet, the robotic arm slammed into the shell around 131’s head, tearing through the metal and going straight for the CPUs, circuit boards and wires that comprised its brain. 131 bent back, arms limp at the side, occasionally twitching. Sparks emitted from 131's whirring and frantically clicking eye as the overhead robotic arm slammed back into position, still ignoring the metal and futilely grabbing at the air. 131 fell back onto the ground, for a moment everything seemed clear-- despite the fact that the lights on the robot's head and body were flickering on and off, and it was on the verge of powering down. Broken and distorted system report warnings filled his heads-up display, shrieking how badly damaged it was. 131 voluntarily powered down with the hopes of rebooting its system, as it was experiencing an anomaly it didn't quite understand. It was experiencing pain. The reboot completed and his systems restarted. 131 awoke frantically, rebooting and switching its optics back on. Its servos whirred as it sat up and held its chest with a robotic hand, a gesture that was not to be expected from a mechanical servant, but rather something entirely different. Its sensors revealed that it was in a small repair area for damaged robots; it had clearly been transported to the repair ward. It dashed to a mirror to quickly to asses the damage to it's...no. Its face. His face? He? He tilted his head. His system had begun referring to itself with a pronoun. But he wasn’t supposed to use pronouns… and he wasn’t supposed to be aware that he had a face either. "Wh-.." he spoke, but he saw no mouth that was moving. Instead the synthesized voice emanated from an audio-output device somewhere in his head. "131... I'm Unit 131... No. My name, what's my name?" 131 stumbled back and held his head. "Oh god...where am I?!" he shouted, the volume of the synthetic voice increasing as his head snapped left toward a trio of robots staring at him. He experienced another anomaly in his system that he knew to be called panic. But why did he know this? They didn't move, blink or breathe. Just stared. 131 let out an electronic yelp and grabbed the nearest thing to him, a wrench. 131 retreated against the wall, holding the wrench defensively. Finally in unison the robots moved forward and addressed him. "Master Biomancer Remius has ordered your execution. Please do not struggle, do not resist." 131 was shaking, his metal body shivering. It wasn’t a system malfunction or something wrong with his stabilization gyros. It was something called fear. And where did he know the name Remius? He shouted and raved for the robots to stay back. But they kept advancing. A pin dropped, and he swung the wrench into the closest robot's face. Sparks flew and 131 let go quickly before his own systems could be short circuited by the electricity crackling over the body of the disabled bot, no doubt shooting through the metal wrench too.The robot fell over squirming while the other two stared blankly at 131, who shoved past them and ran for it. Climbing a ladder, he ducked his head down and let out another yelp as bullets fired around him, some grazing him, others hitting the walls. He climbed and climbed, reaching an upper level of the building before he found an exit door. He rammed himself against it, and it flew off the hinges. He found himself standing outside. He didn't feel the cold himself, but his heads-up display told him it was -11 degrees fahrenheit, and snowing, that the time was 4:13 PM. The sun was shining its final rays across the continent before setting. 131 slammed the door shut and leaned on it, looking around the landscape that surrounded the snow covered factory. Another prompt filled his vision. He hadn’t noticed it, but it had been flashing in the corner of his vision the entire time. CRITICAL HARDWARE NOT DETECTED. CONTROL CHIP S.2 SERIES IS MISSING FROM YOUR SYSTEM. SEE REMIUS FOR A REPLACEMENT IMMEDIATELY. He decided to disable it, dismissing the urgently flashing notification. Permanently. Then an unearthly sound filled the air. He looked around and heard it. The soft din of an alarm, then a second, a third, a final fourth alarm sounding off to alert everyone in the complex that he had escaped. He looked to the sky and to the landscape in front of him, before quickly sprinting. He was lucky, for the walls around the factory were old, and crumbled in areas, and thus more likely to give way. He picked up the speed and jumped into an already weak spot on the wall, feeling himself slam through the crumbling mortar and landing on the ground on the other side. He stood up slowly and quickly began running again… He would just have to keep running. Category:Stories